Hiding your Catalyst Dongle

[foxrider]

Hi,

anyone care to share some ideas how you hide your dongle for your Mac Pro? I'm thinking of getting a USB card with internal ports but I'm wondering if there are better ideas out there.

[samsc]

Hi,

anyone care to share some ideas how you hide your dongle for your Mac Pro? I'm thinking of getting a USB card with internal ports but I'm wondering if there are better ideas out there.

a number of rental companies do this-

be careful with usb cards make sure they have up to date usb drivers for latest mac osx version

[MattMills]

I did this to mine, works good. I believe I read that if you use the internal usb, one of the usb ports on the exterior will not work. What I did was wrap electrical tape around the dongle inside to make sure it stayed in place, as well as wrapped electrical tape around the usb port that is no longer active.

[Mr_P]

We supply the Sonnet Allegro USB card in all our server builds and have never seen one of the external ports disabled when dongle is connected to the internal port...

Which card are you using?

It could either be a faulty card or over current with the device you are connecting to the external port.

Simon

[SourceChild]

See the attached picture. I have been using beaded chain on my Dongles. This works well since I put the attachment part inside the machine. Obviously someone could cut it but my machines are usually in racks and locations where this is not likely.

I love the USB Card, especially since I'll used USB to serial devices, USB Midi, and USB Audio. However, I have a few machines I have put as many as three Phoenix, three LFG4 Cards, or a combination with a RAID card. All which prevents me from being able to add the extra USB Cards.

[NevBull]

I use the Sonnet cards - never had a problem. I would also advise using a blob of RTV (silicon sealant) to ensure the dongle doesnt work loose.

Nev.

[RedLightning]

When I bought/built my first server I went out and bought an internal USB card for this exact reason. Then the logical/Worst case scenario (read always negative) side of my brain came up with this...

I leave my dongle attached via a long USB extension secured to the case via screws...here is my logic...
If someone gets into the venue and sees 2 bright shiny MacPros in cases they are going to grab the machines and go, they aren't going to worry about the dongles/keyboards etc...I could walk into the venue and see that the servers are gone I wouldn't be happy about it but I could go out to my local apple store and drop my ccard and buy a new MacPro some hard drives use a backup content drive to transfer over what i need and be back up and running in a couple of hours...

If the dongle was an internal USB card, someone steals the MacPro, and has no idea as to the value of the dongle and tosses it in the trash...

[Mauricio Caicedo]

I agree on the Sonnet Allegro USB, it has worked best for me, and all the outside ports work perfectly.....

[Peter]

Perhaps a bit over the top but looks OK, havent tested though :

http://www.cadlock.tv/

Allegro solutions works well indeed.